Conaway:" The 2012 Republican Budget provides a path to prosperity

By Mike Conaway Congressman for District 11

Published 2:38 pm, Friday, April 8, 2011

When I first asked for the opportunity to represent you, I ran because I looked at the deplorable state of the federal budget and saw a future of rapidly diminishing opportunity for my seven grandchildren. Today, this future has come upon us much more quickly than I could have imagined six short years ago.

Last month, President Obama released his 2012 budget, his vision for our nation’s future. Although he talked eloquently about the need to reduce our debt and reform our government, his budget utterly failed to deliver. It hides from the difficult choices we must confront and calls for 30 more years of the last 30 years.

The president’s budget spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much. It continues our unsustainable path of trillion-dollar deficits, bankrupts Medicare and drives our federal debt to levels never before seen in the modern world. The future the president has laid before the American people is of a nation that is poor, indebted and hopeless.

This past Tuesday, House Republicans released their own blue print for America, a budget we’ve titled “The Path to Prosperity.” The future the 2012 Republican budget calls for is radically different than the president’s. Our budget strengthens our nation’s finances, shrinks our national debt and preserves the promises of Medicare and Medicaid for generations to come. While I do not agree with every line of the budget, I believe it addresses the difficult financial position of our nation in a comprehensive and rational way. This budget puts our government on a path to long-term sustainability.

Specifically, we cut government spending $5.8 trillion over the next decade compared to today’s budget, and we reduce the size and scope of government in the long term, holding it well below its historic size through 2050 by instituting meaningful caps in spending. In addition, our budget protects Medicare from bankruptcy, reduces and simplifies taxes for all Americans, and eliminates the job-killing health care law. Taken together, the proposals in our budget will reduce the growth in the federal debt by $4.4 trillion over 10 years, put the federal budget into primary balance by 2015, and put our nation on a trajectory to fully pay off every penny of our debt by the end of the century.

The costs of business as usual are staggering. If we do nothing, if we follow the president’s lead, every projection and every model predicts the bankrupting of our nation. Moreover, it will be a crisis that comes to bear within our lifetimes. For citizens who are 50 today, this crisis will become untenable just as they are nearing retirement age. When they turn 64, in 2025, the CBO expects that federal mandatory spending — our entitlements and interest — finally will crowd out the last dollar of discretionary spending — federal spending on defense, transportation, veterans care, education and everything else. By 2037, when those same individuals are turning 76 and settling into their golden years, the CBO believes the current path of our government is so unsustainable there is no model that can explain how our economy would continue to function.

Whether we choose to admit it or not, we are drowning in a sea of red ink. Unfortunately, at this moment of peril the president has chosen to throw us a millstone. His budget perpetuates trillion-dollar deficits and fails to even begin to address the hard choices we must make. His budget punted on the two fastest growing government programs — Medicare and Medicaid. Absent efforts to save these programs, we cannot avoid the waves of debt that are coming.

House Republicans have proposed a bold vision for the future of our nation — one in which all Americans are wealthier and the next Americans are free of the crushing burdens of still more debt. By reducing our spending, our taxes and our deficits, we can create a future that is more prosperous — one where we work to serve ourselves and our own needs, rather than the unquenchable demands of a government spiraling ever deeper into debt. We now find ourselves at a fork in the road and we must make a choice.

To the left is more of what we have already seen — crushing deficits, all-consuming growth in entitlement spending, a ballooning debt and in the end a broken, impoverished people. It is a road of certain financial peril; the numbers we face do not lie.

To the right, stretches a new path, carved out by the House 2012 budget proposal. It is one that will not be easy, one that requires each one of us to rethink our expectations of government, but one that offers my grandchildren and yours the same future of hope and opportunity our grandparents left us.

It is an exciting time to be a member of Congress, I am energized by the important debates we are having about spending, the Constitution and the very nature of our government. This new civic engagement is sometimes messy, often loud, but always good for our nation. Our founding fathers built a government that thrives on debate and citizen engagement.

We face historic challenges, but I believe we can overcome them. I look forward to arguing vigorously for the principles of limited government, individual liberty and fiscal restraint that all Texans hold dear. As a people who govern themselves, we always have held our destiny in our hands. Today, as we stand collectively at this crossroads, I never have known that statement to be more true.